Woodshop News - Cullen Grace

COVER
STORY
Bosses
Shop
Three
One
Having three top dogs at one company might sound like a nightmare scenario, but Ken Smith,
Steve Petrie and Mark Grothman say it has truly enhanced their business
Cullen Grace Joinery is a
custom cabinet and furniture
shop in Becket, Mass., which
specializes in producing
antique finishes in-house.
Y
B
R
I
A
N
ullen Grace Joinery, a fiveman shop nestled in the
Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, produces highend furniture that is often
finished with the look of years gone by.
The shop’s Web site states that the
style, material, and finish all work toward the goal of making the piece feel
like an antique without creating a reproduction. The business is based on
serving designers, decorators and architects, and the majority of business
C
36
C
A
L
D
W
E
comes from four or five sources.
Ken Smith founded Cullen Grace Joinery — Cullen and Grace are the middle
names of Smith’s children — in Becket,
Mass., in 1995. Smith’s solid woodworking ability, combined with his finishing
expertise and business skills has brought
the shop increased recognition during
the past 10 years. Along the way he has
added talented employees, which has
enabled Smith to accept larger and more
sophisticated projects. The shop has
several unusual aspects, including its
L
L
/
S T A F F
financial structure, having three employees who at one time or another owned
their own shop, and a relationship with
a cooperative of carvers in Nepal.
Who’s the boss?
Steve Petrie joined Smith several years
ago and brought along the experience he
gained while running his own one-man
shop. An avid cyclist, Petrie left Cullen
Grace about a year ago to fulfill a dream
and bike around Europe. He followed his
European venture with another — riding
W R I T E R
a motorcycle around the United States.
Down a person in the shop, Smith hired
Mark Grothman, a retired ballet dancer
from New York City, to replace Petrie.
Grothman had operated his own oneman shop for six years and had 12 years
experience as a cabinetmaker.
During his motorcycle trip, Petrie
came close to accepting a job at a shop
in San Francisco, but instead, returned
to the Berkshires and resumed working
at Cullen Grace.
At this point, Cullen Grace had some
WOODSHOP NEWS May 2005
PHOTO: MICHAEL GORDON
B
unanswered questions. How would the
business be set up and who would be
responsible for running it? Was shop
expansion necessary? Did the shop
have sufficient tools and machinery?
The decision was made to double the
shop’s size to 4,000 sq. ft. Since the expansion, Grothman and Petrie have
joined Smith in running the shop, Luke
Bates was hired and the two entry-level
employees departed. Bill Connell —
with experience as a restoration contractor, banker and engineer — has
been added to the staff.
Smith attempted to form a legal partnership, a cooperative comprising himself, Petrie and Grothman to own and run
the business. It proved to be too difficult
to arrange and the shop is now a corporation with Smith the sole stockholder.
“In practice, what it comes out to and
the way we’ve agreed to structure things
is that it is a cooperative team effort and
the rewards and benefits we receive are
shared,” Smith said. “We did look into
doing partnerships and trying to spread
out the financial liabilities and turn it into
a legal partnership, but that was overly
burdensome and problematic.”
Cullen Grace has a strong benefits
package — health insurance, 401K and
vacation. Plus, although Smith wouldn’t
exactly call it profit sharing, when the
company makes money it goes to the
employees in one form or another.
“I can present a compensation package that I know is much more substantial than if I had to make sure there was
enough fluff left over in case we had a
bad project,” Smith explained. “I give
them what is available as part of the
compensation package but they know if
we have a really bad quarter, there’s not
extra money there to make up for it. We
have to make sure that we make our
bottom line at the end of every quarter.
“I think it is a reasonable goal to be able
to expect that you can get health insurance and a comfortable place to live and
send your kids to college,” Smith added.
Smith also takes care of the books. By
using a combination of Quicken and
Microsoft’s Excel software, he is able to
quickly produce accurate spreadsheets
that track the business down to the last
penny. He can’t emphasize enough
how simple the process is.
“Each project is tracked so we know
who is spending what hours doing
what. That allows me to verify that we
did make money on the project. It also
gives me a really powerful tool for estimating what it’s going to take to do
something else in the future that has
some similar qualities. I incorporate
into that spreadsheet an allotment for
what my cost of business is. As I take
my annual cost of business and divide
that by the amount of hours that people in the shop can work, I figure we
are at about 85 percent efficiency. I
know that shop maintenance and doing
estimates for projects that we don’t
get, that accounts for about 15 percent
of our year. And that’s fine because I
know we can make good money doing
the other 85 percent.”
Three’s company
Having three past and former shop
owners under one shop roof has its advantages.
“The thing that Mark and I have
pulled off our own businesses is we
bring an understanding of efficiencies
and a need for efficiencies,” said Petrie.
“If a project is going over-budget we
have a sixth sense that this isn’t a good
idea, we need to rethink. We have a
very specific interest in how well this
business does. We’re not just coming
with our hands in our pockets expecting to collect a paycheck.”
“We’re finding that it makes sense to
have one lead person on a given project, and any one of the three of us is
capable of being that leader,” said
Smith. “Once that person has sat down
and come up with a progression of
how that project should flow, he can
pull any one of the others or the other
two guys in the shop out. We will have
two, perhaps three, large projects
going on simultaneously. It’s important
that one person be the primary leader
on that. It’s also important that any one
of three-fifths of the team here is capable of being the leader and that gives us
a strong dynamic.”
Even though a project will have one
lead person, there is a series of checks
and balances that helps all involved —
and therefore, the end product.
“We’re constantly checking each
PHOTO: MICHAEL GORDON (BOTTOM LEFT)
CULLEN GRACE JOINERY
Location: Becket, Mass.
Principals: Ken Smith, Steve Petrie and Mark Grothman
Shop size: 4,000 sq. ft.
Number of employees: 5
Principle projects: Commissioned custom furniture
and cabinetry, veneer work, antique finishes
Smith on dollars and sense: “Keeping track of the numbers is important and not nearly as difficult as a lot of people
think it might be. You don’t need to be a brilliant mathematician or a computer whiz to do very basic bookkeeping.
Ken Smith
Petrie’s shop outlook: “Everybody here has worked
toward getting a place where everyone wants to come to work; everybody is
excited about showing up here. It’s exciting being involved in all aspects of
the business … the vision of where this business ends up is an open
discussion for everybody.”
May 2005 WOODSHOP NEWS
(Clockwise from top) Smith and a decorator designed this 26"-wide dining table,
made from solid Cuban mahogany; Cullen Grace Joinery built this white oak desk
with the assistance of Nepalese carvers; cherry veneer was used for this 60"
round dining table that extends to 11" in length with the addition of six leaves.
other; there’s little-to-no ego here whatsoever so we are constantly watching
over each other’s shoulders because
there is an element that goes on with
everyone working on something [different] that you will overlook something,” related Grothman. “Our skills
are very different and in some ways we
approach projects somewhat differently and all three of us can have a discussion and we’ll come up with a version
that works.”
Shop equipment includes a Sicar flat
mortiser, Kolle sliding table saw, Powermatic table saw, Rockwell 20" band saw,
Sandingmaster 37" wide belt sander,
American 16" jointer, Inca 12" jointer,
Rockwell 18" planer, Powermatic 15"
planer, line boring machine, Delta X
series drill press and DeWalt miter saw.
In-house finishing
Smith’s knowledge of finishing is impressive. He has developed dozens of
finishing combinations thanks to years
of speaking with finishing experts, and
constantly experimenting until he successfully obtains the desired look (see
sidebar). Every piece that Cullen Grace
produces is finished on the premises.
“We can do a fully filled high-gloss
finish with a polyurethane spray-on material,” Smith said. “We don’t spray precatalyzed lacquer over a stain. We have
a broad repertoire and it certainly goes
well beyond the particular stains we
use. It’s combinations of conversion
varnish and lacquers and shellac and
opaque lacquers, and then we use
dyes, we use glazes, we use waxes, we
use a lot of different things.
“I think that is an important control
point for us. First of all the logistics of
moving it to another shop to have it
finished would be problematic. The
finish in so many respects is integral
to the whole project that there is no
way we could do what we do without
doing finishing.”
“Based on my experiences plus the
[Berkshire Woodworkers] Guild people
I have worked with, Ken’s knowledge
of finishing far exceeds what I think
most shops are capable of,” said Petrie.
“He’s very technically oriented and he
will exhaust a finishing supplier’s
knowledge about their product. He still
wants to know more.”
37
Out-sourced carvings
Smith took a hiking and trekking trip
to Nepal five years ago and checked
out the local woodworking. The area
was known for producing intricate
carvings, a talent dating back for many
generations. He hooked up with Lee
Birch who grew up in the United States
but had lived in Nepal for 25 years at
that point, 30 years now.
“She ran a carving guild,” he related.
“She had gotten together a bunch of
traditional people from a single area,
village or tribe and wanted to establish
an ongoing viable business where they
could use skills that had been passed
on for centuries.
“She does a great job. It’s very satisfying to send her initial sketches and
get back very detailed, two-dimensional drawings in what the piece
will look like in three dimensions. I’ll
edit that in Photoshop, send it back.
We do a lot of back and forth on email. She’ll then generate a carved
sample, photograph it, again a lot of
back and forth. Once or twice she
has actually shipped the sample here
for approval. It takes about a week
and it’s pretty costly.”
The Nepalese carvers work with a
rosewood-type wood that is a dalbergia
species native to Asia. The availability
of wood in Nepal is a huge problem
and Smith noted it prevents Cullen
Grace from increasing the workload for
the carvers. Birch is currently working
on an affordable method to obtain a
sufficient supply of wood for the
Nepalese carvers.
“They are incredibly fast and the quality of it is as good as the best carvers I’ve
seen here, far better than what is typical
carving in this country,” Smith added.
Unlimited potential
Cullen Grace caters to national and
international clientele, as well as customers spread out in the 30 towns that
make up Berkshire County.
“Most of our clients here in Berkshire
County are second-home owners,” said
Smith. “The house value of the residential projects that we work on is anywhere from $1 million to $2 million.”
When asked what they attributed the
success of Cullen Grace to, Petrie quickly answered, “luck.”
“You make your own luck,” noted
Smith. “We have stumbled upon opportunity but we’ve been willing to take
advantage of that opportunity.”
“And we value that opportunity,”
Petrie added. “The relationships that
we have, there’s nobody who gets
taken for granted. From Ken’s personality being open to the input and
wanting the input, not wanting to be
the only person responsible for every
decision that’s been made and allowing it to be a dynamic relationship
where we all have equal say — that’s
all important. That’s why I came back.
You need someone to take a personal
interest; it’s too small of an operation
for the people who work here to not
take a personal interest.”
Projects that were too large to con-
sider a year or two ago, now are possible and even profitable. With all the
changes at Cullen Grace during the
past year, one can’t help but wonder
what lies down the road.
“We are down the road,” Smith
said. “This has great potential here. I
think another important part of it is
that we all come from dissimilar backgrounds, and the important thing is
not woodworking. We’ve got a perspective of the world beyond just
manual labor. That’s a big part of
what we do but we can incorporate
many other parts of our own lives
and that helps us in dialogues with
clients and managing the business.
We understand what is important to
people and that is what allows us to
provide them with the product and
service that they’re after.” n
Contact: Cullen Grace Joinery, 1017
George Carter Road, Becket, MA
01233. Tel: 413-243-1765. www.berk
shirewoodworkers.org/smith.html
Creating a ‘natural wear’ finish
38
immersed in water and used for more clarity than a
pigmented wiping stain.
• sealed it with a Valspar precatalyzed finish, the
NUF 3604.
• applied a color coat of glaze with the same CNA
stain mixed six-parts water to one-part stain. Smith
called it his color glaze. He then worked it around
with some 3M Scotchbrite, steel wool and rags to
give it a splotchy look.
• sealed it again with the Valspar precatalyzed finish
• used the same CNA colorant for an accent glaze in
all the crevices and all the cracks, but at a stronger
mixture — two-parts water to one part CNA.
• top-coated it with same Valspar self-sealing precatalyzed lacquer.
PHOTO: MICHAEL GORDON
Cullen Grace Joinery had a client who recently
ordered a home library built out of Lyptus, Weyerhaeuser’s eucalyptus hybrid. The customer wanted
the library to look as though it had accumulated
years of patina and natural wear, giving the feeling
that the woodwork was decades old.
Ken Smith worked with Matt Squires, a finishing
expert and sales representative with Raybern Co.,
to develop a finishing process to meet the client’s
desired look.
Pictured is the storyboard Smith kept of the process; the final result is on the right. The steps, as
explained by Squires, are as follows:
• applied aniline dye
• went over it with a CNA stain from ICA (Italy).
CNA is their water stain, a finely ground pigment
— Brian Caldwell
WOODSHOP NEWS May 2005